“Allah bless us and bless our families and bless our Lord. Lead us on the straight path – the path of all the prophets: Abraham, Ishmael, Isaac, Moses, Jesus and Muhammad,” and so went the prayer offered up by Wajidi Said, from the Portland Muslim Community, as part of the “first order of business” during the opening plenary session of the 222nd General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA).

Don’t believe it? Here’s the video from the PCUSA. The Islamic prayer begins at 14:04.

It’s a beautiful prayer, but it denies the divinity of Jesus, calling him a “prophet.” This is orthodox Muslim teaching, and quite right for a Muslim to profess in public. But why are Christians, in an explicitly Christian assembly, allowing this?

Well, this is the same church body that embraced same-sex marriage a couple of years ago. This has done nothing to arrest the PCUSA’s collapse. If this bears out, the PCUSA will have gone from 2.5 million members to 1.2 million in just 20 years. That’s over half their people! And it will have gone from 4.3 million in 1965 (it’s high point) to 1.2 million in half a century — a loss of nearly 75 percent of its membership in less than a single lifetime. (See here for figures.)

By the way, Pew reckons that there are two to three times more Muslims in the US than members of the PC(USA). So maybe having an imam come pray to Allah at their annual powwow is the liberal Presbyterians’ way of betting on the future.

[If you want to follow the links that Dreher provides, go to his blog at www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/]